


wake up, wake up (there's a world out there)

by glowingjellyfishtreelights



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Alternate Universe, Link is not the only one to sleep away a century, Memory Loss, canon means nothing to me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2019-09-15 10:56:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16931976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glowingjellyfishtreelights/pseuds/glowingjellyfishtreelights
Summary: there's a girl in a forest, and a boy atop a plateau; there's a broken sword and monsters in the world and a destiny eager to sink in its claws.their lives are their own.





	1. it's time to wake

_…_

 

_…_

 

_…?_

 

_Back to sleep, little Princess. It is not yet time to wake._

 

_…_

  
  
  


 

 

_Chiming._

_…?_

chihi!

_Tickles…_

Now, now, children. Let her sleep in peace.

_Mmm…_

Ah, now, see? We are disturbing her. Come now, let her rest…

_…?_

_Not yet, little Princess. It is still the time for dreaming._

_…_

…

  


 

 

_…_

_…_

_…_

_…?_

… now…

_...she?_

“... time to ….”

_… now...time to… she? she? She is?_

“It’s time to wake up now, Zelda.”

  


 

 

At the heart of a woods wreathed by fog and magic, where a broken sword stands proud and patient in her pedestal, lies a girl, shrouded in flowers, cradled by moss and stone.

She opens her eyes.

 

Halfway across Hyrule, a boy does the same.

 


	2. stretching away the sleep

The flowers in her hair do not want to leave it.

The Great Deku Tree laughs, a low, warm rumble she feels all the way deep in her chest. The children of the forest titter gleefully as they flitter and toddle around her, chiming and rattling so the forest feels filled with mirth.

“You have been sleeping for one hundred years,” The Great Deku Tree reminds her, and she can see his ancient face move from her place, sitting propped against one of the trees growing around the edges of the clearing in which she woke- so small compared to him, but not even three of her together could join hands around it. “They have grown there since they were but seeds in the cracks in the stones beneath your head. Is there any harm in simply letting them be?”

The Koroks on her shoulders and lap, “helping” her untangle her hair- by sneaking in new greenery and encouraging that already there to twine in further, it seems- all break into eager chiming agreement. She feels the soft tickle of tiny leaves against her ear, a light brush of the edge of a leafy mask against her cheek as one leaps off.

She brushes her fingers against the soft, curved petals of a bloom she cannot see. A delicate blue flower bobs against the dirty fabric covering her knee.

(Fabric from a hundred years ago. Could she really have slept for so long?

She doesn’t even remember falling asleep.)

She leaves the flowers be, and the Koroks show their approval by making a game of trying to sneak in more every time her back turns.

 

 

Her name is Zelda.

Her name is Zelda. She likes sleeping in sunlight. She doesn’t like sleeping on stone. She likes the way apples crunch under her teeth. She likes watching the frogs hopping around the edges of the ponds. She likes the way the forest comes alive with lights at night, when the flowers glow and fireflies dance, floating just out of reach as she chases them with the forest children, giggling as she splashes through shallow pools of clear water, barefoot. She likes hiding from the rain inside the old, moss-covered structures the Koroks call ‘shrines’, listening to the birds sing and the rain fall on the forest, filling the air with the heady scent of _life_. She likes the shrines themselves, running her hands along the curious texture and strange patterns, poking at their edges and wondering if there’s anything under them, and how long they had sat in the forest, slowly being grown over.

The broken sword in her pedestal, catching every glimmer of light between her rusted parts, makes her heart twist and ache, deep and painful.

She does not like to look at it.

She was sleeping in front of it. She was sleeping in front of the broken sword, and while she slept flowers grew between the cracks in the stones, twining through her hair, tangling around her, until she woke.

Her name is Zelda. She was sleeping for one hundred years.

She doesn’t know why.

 

 

When she woke, she was covered in dirt and what she thought was blood.

(She doesn’t remember how, or why, she got covered in these things. She doesn’t remember whose blood it _is_ , if it’s blood at all. She doesn’t remember a lot of things.

She doesn’t remember _anything_ and she feels as though that should scare her more than it _doesn’t_ , it doesn’t at all, there is nothing in her past and everything in the world is full of wonder-

She doesn’t ask. She could. She might even get an answer.

She doesn’t ask.)

It washed away easily enough- a little creek she was led to, icy-cold enough to make her yelp as she splashed and scrubbed at her arms and face and legs, contorted herself around to try and get at her back, where she could feel dry mud flaking, only to be descended on by a determinedly helpful little Korok with two little mushrooms growing on one of its branches, and got a whole hollow acorn-shell the size of her fist full of water dumped all over her head, and in the end her skin was clean and her sandals were put aside to hang to dry inside the Great Deku Tree, the gold bracelets joining them, and there they would stay, forgotten, as she explored the forest around the shelter of the Great Deku Tree’s expansive roots.

But the dress.

The dress still held onto the shadows and the stains, and it gained more by the day, because it was not _easy_ , to go climbing trees, or wading through ponds, or hopping from stones to stumps to fallen trees in woodland bogs while wearing a strapless dress with a very long skirt, but she was very determined to do so anyway, and _did_.

And it _worked_ , but the toll…

The Great Deku Tree hummed in thought, when she finally very sheepishly went to him, some time after waking up on the stone to a sky filled with curious Korok faces and not a memory to her mind- how long it had been, exactly, she could not tell, having been going by the rhythms of life in the forest, and having no thought for tracking such things in the slightest until this exact moment.

Long enough to have wrecked her only article of clothing, for certain.

She found herself sitting, again, cross-legged and watching the Great Deku Tree as he sent flurries of his children buzzing to and fro, while two Koroks were, once again, buried in her hair- so much for having finally, painstakingly, having untangled the last of the plants, carefully returned to the earth, she thought, as she felt soft petals brush her shoulder and heard one of the Koroks cheering the on other; her hair gently being tugged on by tiny, strange hands.

By the time the fireflies start to drift out of hiding, Zelda finds herself crowned with glowing flowers and garbed in green.

“This was the forest-garb of my children, a long, long time ago,” The Great Deku Tree’s branches sway in the wind, sending down a flurry of pink petals. “It has not been made in this forest since I was very young- almost a new sprout, myself.”

Zelda looks down at herself. The shorts come only a short bit past the tunic, which drapes well down to almost the tops of her knees- all very simple, all colored as though the clothes were plucked from the trees themselves. The feel of the fabric she grazes a finger along she does not have a word for- only that is is comfortable, somehow comforting, and she already never wants to take them off. Her bare toes wiggle in the dirt.

(She tries to picture a Korok in a very, very small version of the tunic. She doesn’t _quite_ manage it.)

“They’re _lovely_.” The words feel insufficient in so many ways, but she smiles, as bright as she can, and hope her tone fills in what she doesn’t know how to say.

 

She falls in the bog the next day.

It turns out whatever the forest garb is made of, no mud, no matter how thick, gloppy, and crushed into the fabric it is, is capable of staining it.

It also turns out there are fish in at least one of the ponds, as Zelda finds out, when she gets a little too enthusiastically nudged to the body of water, and ends up _under_ water.

Another discovery- she knows how to swim, which she had never actually thought about.

Fortunately, it seems muscle memory lingers even if you don’t _actually_ have the memory in your head to go with it. Which is all kinds of fascinating and leaves her wondering what _else_ she can do that she doesn’t even know she can?

(It _also_ turns out the forest garb dries from an utter soaking in the time it takes to go from the smallest of the three ponds to the Great Deku Tree’s root arches, incidentally. She’s not sure if it’s her old dress, or her new clothes that’s the strange one, in this regard, and the curiosity is overwhelming.

The tunic finds itself subject to a great many more muds and slimes and goops- the Koroks find it all to be very great fun, and she ends up experiencing more than she would have liked over her entire body instead of _just_ the curious fabric.

The pond undergoes a great many more visits.)

 

She is determined, now, to catch a fish. She knows they’re in here- she can see the lazy flash of scales in the dappled sunlight.The Koroks line up, fascinated, along the edges of the pond, hovering over the water, as she slowly wades out and treads water until she gets to the center of the pond.

Little fish nibble at her feet. _Just_ out of arm reach, utterly unconcerned with her presence, so close she can see the green of its scales against the moss of the pond, a fish swims slowly by.

She takes a deep breath, and plunges under.

 

 

Fish are not easy to catch.

 

 

(It takes her a month, and the triumph is _golden_.)

 

 

 

“Why was I sleeping here?” Zelda asks the Great Deku Tree. There are fish and mushrooms speared on a stick in her hand, roasted over an open fire- they need some flavor, but they are warm and filling and she sinks her teeth into them with relish.

The Great Deku Tree is silent for so long she thinks he has gone to sleep.

“You made a choice.” he says, finally, startling her as she goes for her last bite of fish, almost dropping it. “And it was _yours_.”

And he tells her no more.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *fingerguns* eyyy how 'bout that 7 AM editing huh 
> 
> anyway we've got zelda running around barefoot in the forest trying to scientifically test the limits of her magic forest clothing. wonder what link's up to?


	3. wake up, dead boy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look I know I said I was banning myself from social media/basically 98% of the internet until new years but I had this written so I figured why not put it up since I have it right here

The world begins with a bloom of blue.

Slowly, he blinks; a breath of cool air ghosts along his cheekbones, his chest. There’s a low hum he feels more than hears, vibrating down through his bones.

He does not know where his body is- he knows, distantly, he has one, but where it is, in the warmth, in the haze, he can not tell.

But why should that concern him?

He blinks again. This time, it’s a struggle to open them once more- but why? Why should he be keeping his eyes open- why isn’t he letting himself melt away into the dream-

And abruptly, the world ceases to be muffled, and he is  _ cold _ .

 

He’s upright.

He feels the shock of his feet connecting with the floor all the way up his spine, staggering against the side of the thing- the metal machine- the basin? bed? Gripping the side as the world spins, wavers, settles, shivering. 

His hair is dripping wet, icy little drops racing down his chin, his arms, his back, dotting the floor in little flashes of something blue and glowing in the dim light. It’s not water. It feels like water, but it’s not.

He doesn’t know how he knows that. 

_ Clck- whrrrrr _

He’s halfway across the room with his hands up before he realizes he’s even moved at the sound- that there was a sound at all to react to, head snapping to track the noise.

A pillar, glowing blue, is what meets him- and a square, streaked with orange, with a small ring of bright blue, like an eye, sticking out from the top of it. It leaves him faltering, every muscle tensing, before he notices the wall behind it.

A door.

 

He’s circled the whole room and inspected the door when he finally gives in and goes to the odd pillar.

The dust motes glow blue in here, lit dimly by the twisting snarl of metal and piping that takes over the roof above the thing he woke up in- whatever it is, it’s still active, the only sound in the room the near-soundless background humming as it runs, and his own steps.

There’s no dust on the floor. The glowing specks hanging in the air- they might not be dust either. 

Everything is sealed tight.

The thing sticking out of the pillar isn’t part of it, it turns out- his first vague plan was to push it, if it were a lever or a button. But it falls with the motion, and he scrabbles to catch it.

The instant it leaves the pillar, the door scrapes open, and the thing lights up in his hands.

There’s- a little arrow, and a small orange dot. That’s it, other than faint blue lines and half-faded squiggles that pop in and out of view as he watches them. There’s scratches all over the screen of whatever it’s made of- the top feels more fragile than the back, which feels more like the stone under his feet than anything.

It lays innocently in his hands. It doesn’t- blow up, or bite him, or anything. It just glows up at him, and nothing more.

He takes it with him into the next room.

It’s sealed too- but this room has dust in the corners, half-rotted barrels and crates on the floor, and one crumbles to pieces when he pokes it with a foot. There’s a tangle of leather inside- a belt set, old, cracking, but it has two bags hanging off of it, and he finds a way to hook the slate to the top. Another part, he thinks, is for a sword- he can see the place to attach a sheath, to hook on a shield.

He takes that with him, too.

The last crate holds the jackpot- it’s full of clothes, some so fragile they crumble in his hands, others clearly shredded and chewed on to the point of ruin- mice or moths, but no other signs of either. In the end, there’s one shirt he manages to shimmy into, feeling the seams tear a little at the shoulders and wincing, and a pair of pants that fit, but leave his ankles exposed. 

Not a single pair of shoes he can find fit his feet. He tries them all. 

Whoever’s clothes these are, they’re  _ tiny _ . They also need newer clothing, because all of this is dry-rotting. 

He’s not entirely certain the pants are going to hold up long. The shirt’s certainly not- he felt it tear again when he crouched down to sift through the crates one more time. 

That might end up being a problem.

 

He’s already warmer when he goes to poke at the door at the end of  _ this _ room, kicking up dust as he goes, and jumps halfway out of his skin when another pillar he didn’t notice lights up, bright orange and a ring of blue in the middle- exactly like the odd, slate-like object, actually.

He pokes it, once his heart stops slamming against his ribcage so fast. 

It doesn’t do anything.

Hm.

… There’s no buttons, no easily removable parts, no visible switches…

No harm in trying, right? 

He tries lining up the blue circles, slate to pillar- nothing happens. Waving it around- nothing, nothing- flip it over to check the back again and make sure it really does look the same-

_ “Authenticating _ .”

The pillar lights up blue and chimes as the screen moves over it, and he starts back as a voice, unsettlingly  _ mechanical _ in inflection comes from the pillar.

“ _ Sheikah Slate confirmed _ ,” the voice says, blandly pleasant, the door lighting up- filling the room with the groaning and grinding protests of stone and old mechanisms as the door starts to open and-

Oh

_ Sunlight. _

It’s  _ blinding _ , an arm over his eyes but the glow still there- spilling through the open door on a rush of warm air and birdsong- of  _ green, _ of growing things, of rich dirt and fresh rain and-

-he’s out the door; still half-blind from the sun- splashing through a shallow pool, silt shifting under his feet- over grass, crisp and cool, leaping for the lip of a rock and scrambling over the top, racing up a set of stairs-

-the sun on his shoulders, pushing through bushes, startled birds taking to wing, wildflowers swaying, butterflies spiraling up in a flurry of movement-

-coming to a halt at the edge of a cliff, the breeze in his face, and the  _ world _ .

The world  _ sprawls _ before him, towering trees, glinting water, crumbling ruins- looming mountains and distant forests and vast plains- birds chirp and flutter- crickets sing- the wind draws whispers from the grasses and the trees.

The world is  _ alive _ . 

(and so is he)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once I get more going I'll probably go back and edit stuff to Fit better but first I need to actually *have* enough to figure out where I'm going with this, exactly. I kind of have some loose idea but, well. we'll see???


	4. a lurking destiny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been stuck on link's next chapter for seven months now so here have more zelda instead

 

“Who does she belong to?”

Zelda’s voice is a quiet wisp against the nighttime air- almost lost among the chimes of Koroks at play, the breeze winding its way through tangled branches, setting the leaves all aflutter. The gentle glow of fireflies and the curved blue flowers give a faint light to the pedestal in which the broken blade rests.

The blade is dull in the dimness- no light gleams off her flats. A firefly drifts close to the slanted edge of where the pommel and half the handle must have once been, giving way to a blackened and warped guard, but does not land.

The Great Deku Tree’s branches sway with the rest of the forest, the deep crevices of his face catching shadow and turning it severe. But the magic of the forest hangs ever-vibrant in the air, bright sparks of green and gold and light dancing along paths unseen, and sometimes they drift near those shadowed gullies. Sometimes they linger, alighting on ancient bark as though they desired to take a break, illuminating what the darkness concealed.

“She?” The Great Deku Tree asks, one of his many children landing on one of his great eyebrows, clutching something small and glowing- a river snail shell, she thinks. It very carefully places the object down, then goes flying off again with an air of great purpose. 

“The sword.” Zelda bobs her head towards the pedestal, even though she is so small to him he may well not have noticed her move at all. The pedestal is so old, but even then, the sword-

She does not like the sword.

It is more than that she has apparently slept away a century she cannot remember in front of it, this destroyed weapon standing embedded in stone in the middle of a forest steeped in the magic of life so heavy it can be felt, tasted, _breathed_. It is more than that every time she looks at it, it feels as though there is a hand wringing her heart.

The pedestal is old, but the sword is _ancient_.

(She does not know how she knows this, but she does.

The sword is a she and she has seen _millennia,_ this blade. She was already incomprehensibly, achingly _old_ when the stone she rests in was carved and set in place, all clean edges before the elements wore everything down to curves and faded impressions. She was old when the Great Deku Tree was a mere sprout, seen the passing of thousands on thousands of years before he even began to _be_ , and somehow Zelda knows this to be fact.

There is a _weight_ to her presence that makes all the world seem young- The massive trunks of the forest trees with hundreds of years of growth suddenly seeming to have barely lived at all- The Great Deku Tree now simply seeming old, no longer ancient- Zelda, with her scant few months of memory, feeling as though she has hardly begun to even exist.)

But that is still not why she does not like the sword.

There is something _wrong_ about it all.

Beyond the brokeness- great chunks of missing metal, warped and blackened and rusted, seeming a breath away from simply succumbing to her wounds and falling all to pieces, where her parts would slowly sink into the earth, rusting away, being grown over with grasses and ferns and flowers- something lurking underneath, malice-filled and laced with something vile.

It’s a _sickness_.

That’s the only word she has for it- to Zelda, the sword is ailing. Weakening, a glimmer of light and life cradled inside dimming slow even as it calls out, reaches out to somewhere, someone who is not her, while something infected and greedy chews at her edges. 

Something about it- about that sickness, that infection, sets something to rising up to coil in Zelda’s chest. Something eager and harsh and golden and full of the desire to reach out and _burn_. Something that makes her bristle like an animal provoked to aggression, makes her hands form claws and quiver with the eagerness to surge forth and clash against the blight in battle.

Beyond her dislike of looking at it, the twinging of her heart full of emotions she cannot even begin to separate to try to understand, _this_ unsettles her. These feelings do not feel like they belong to her- they feel too sharp-edged, too wild, and yet still, they feel like nothing less than pure instinct. Like _purpose_ \- what else could she possibly be made for, if not to destroy this thing, burn this taint away to leave the world clean?

She doesn’t like that. It doesn’t feel _right_ , a sort of wrongness that leaves her stomach twisting. She tries as hard as she can to shove all her thoughts away, to stop dwelling, to bring herself back to the now, cool grass under her legs and night air kissing her skin. But still, one wondering strand remains.

The sickness is tangible- the forest magic seems to suppress it, somewhat, but that corruption remains unfaltering.

Why would she have been sleeping near something that feels so evil?

“I do not know if you are ready to hear this, yet.” 

Zelda starts, toppling out of the trap of her own thoughts, and looks back up at the Great Deku Tree. There is a troubled air to him; his eyebrows, now adorned with five faintly glowing snails, are as close to drawn and furrowed as she has ever seen them.

She quickly backtracks, remembers what she asked before getting lost in her head. “Why not?” She asks, curiosity mounting. It’s the same curiosity that prompted her making a mess of herself to see what kind of abuse her new clothing could take- the insatiable urge to _know_ , to dig and prod until she finds the answers she lacks.

A low humming, almost conflicted sound comes from the Great Deku Tree. 

“It is so hard to tell, with you young Hylians,” he says, “so different from my children. It feels as though you have only just awoken, to me. I cannot tell if enough time has passed for you to be recovered from your long sleep.”

“I feel perfectly well!” Zelda protests, leaning forward. “Truely!” And she does- the first week after her awakening, she felt almost unreal, almost as though she was nothing more than spun light contained only by a thin, fragile shell of being- now she wades through bogs to chase frogs to study, holds her breath and swims underwater to capture snails and fish, climbs sturdy trees so high the branches begin to sway to retrieve eggs and pick nuts. 

Another low hum, but this one more amused; now six bright little shells decorate his great eyebrows, and as she watches, a Korok flies over and triumphantly sticks a seventh one on, cheering happily at its own achievement.

“What of a challenge, then?” The Great Deku Tree asks, “prove to me you are ready to hear the tale of this sword, and I will answer your question.”

“How?” Zelda asks.

There’s almost something like nostalgia in his voice when he tells her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hopefully it's not gonna take me another seven months to figure out the next chapter but with my luck/how life works it'll probably be another year lol

**Author's Note:**

> this is pure play and nothing more whoops


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